Eoghan Harris

WHICH mentors inspire Taoiseach Micheal Martin? Look to the two men he cited in Irish — Sean Lemass and Jack Lynch.

Lemass was a peacemaker who went north to meet Captain Terence O’Neill. He also believed Fianna Fail was the party of working people. And Martin checks both boxes.

But Lynch had a tougher task than Lemass — leading a split party through the Northern Troubles, staving off civil war.

Last week, David Davin-Power, RTE’s former political correspondent, told Brendan O’Connor that Jack Lynch topped his list of worst taoisigh.

According to DavinPower, Lynch’s low standing had to do with events covered in Michael Heney’s new book on the Arms Trial of 1970.

“There’s a beginning of a re-examination of his role in events leading up to the Arms Trial which is throwing up some very interesting questions. As you know, Michael Heney has just written a very challenging book about that.”

Davin-Power might have done better to draw attention to the fact that he and Heney are close former colleagues, rather than leave the impression this was a cosy bit of RTE backscratching.

But that’s a minor complaint compared with Davin-Power’s skewed summary of Lynch’s legacy.

“He left his party fundamentally split. The Arms Trial was the Civil

War for Fianna Fail and it left its mark on the party right down, leading to the secession of the Progressive Democrats and beyond. I think his legacy is dubious.”

Let me now say why Jack Lynch is top of my list of modern taoisigh.

Since 1922, southern politicians could choose one of two roles on Northern Ireland — peacemakers or provokers.

Lynch was a sincere peacemaker. He believed unity should only be pursued through peaceful persuasion. Accordingly, we should pack in the petty provocations that drive Northern Protestants back into the trenches.

Haughey was a provoker, the kind of politician who pays lip service to the idea of peaceful persuasion but in practice indulges in every kind of petty tribal provocation, even if it makes moderate unionists fearful of forced unity in a Roman Catholic republic.

Lynch believed that surrender to the Haughey hawks meant a surrender to Sinn Fein and the loss of Fianna Fail’s unique selling point as the republican guardian of Wolfe Tone’s principle of uniting Catholic, Protestant and dissenter.

In the near future, I hope to review Michael Heney’s best-selling The Arms

Crisis of 1970, but here I just want to address the thesis that Lynch had been a hardliner himself until spooked by Liam Cosgrave.

On the contrary, between 1966 and 1972 Lynch carried out a brilliant balancing act — putting pressure on the British government to concede what we call civil rights while not giving an inch to the IRA.

Lynch faced many firsts in his struggle to save the country from civil war and Fianna Fail from internal implosion on the use of force in Northern Ireland.

Although he was the first FF Taoiseach without any revolutionary pedigree — both De Valera and Lemass had borne arms — he felt no need, as Haughey did, to make up for it by verbal republicanism.

He was also the first Taoiseach to be pressed by some of his ministers to effectively declare war on the United Kingdom.

In 1969, members of Lynch’s cabinet wanted him to either send troops across the Border or alternatively to arm the IRA to defend Catholic areas.

Both of these courses of action were criminally irresponsible for two fairly obvious reasons.

First, sending armed troops across an international border in army trucks is an act of war.

Short of firing on our troops the British could have closed the Irish border, expelled Irish immigrants, or wrecked our emerging economy.

Second, Lynch knew that if an Irish government armed the IRA — as Haughey helped to do clandestinely — it would lead to appalling sectarian conflict. Which it did.

Like Micheal Martin, Jack Lynch was known as a ‘decent man’, an important accolade in Ireland.

In politics it means someone who does not put faction before civility or ideology before humanity. That said, Lynch was no pushover either as a hurler or as politician.

A brief chronicle shows that while he could be rightly angry at the UK, he never equated British democracy with the Provisional IRA.

In 1966, shortly after becoming Taoiseach, Lynch met British prime minister Harold Wilson and rather than bluster about a united Ireland, he asked him for something practical — to put pressure on Stormont for one man, one vote.

In return, Lynch agreed to curb provocative statements from his own ministers in respect of Irish unification.

Continuing Lemass’s policy, in December

1967, Lynch met Captain O’Neill in Belfast to discuss trade, cooperation on foot and mouth disease and electricity.

In February and October, 1968, Lynch met Wilson again in London. In his lowkey way, he educated Wilson on Northern Ireland. As a result Wilson pressed Captain O’Neill hard in November 1968 on franchise reform, and on the use of emergency powers against peaceful marches.

Above all, Lynch held his nerve during the angry days of 1968 and 1969, and was willing to risk looking weak rather than inflame the situation by pointless verbal posturing.

But even in the darkest days he never lost sight of Wolfe Tone’s Republic. At Tralee on September

23, 1969, he reminded the Haughey hawks in FF that a united Ireland required

“an acceptable form of reunification”.

A few weeks later, on December 8, 1969.

Niall Blaney publicly repudiated Lynch’s peaceful policy in Letterkenny, saying “the ideal way of ending partition is by peaceful means”, but “no one has the right to assert that force is ruled out”.

But in May 1970, Lynch shackled Blaney, Haughey and Boland with the backing of brave cabinet ministers like Paddy Hillery and Des O’Malley.

In September 1971, he convened a summit with the British and Northern prime ministers which established the right of the Irish government to be involved in discussions about Northern Ireland.

Above all, he held his nerve after Bloody Sunday. Sir John Peck, the British ambassador who admired Lynch’s “courage and tenacity”, wrote that British politicians “had no notion of what the consequence would have been had he lost his head”.

Lynch was never forgiven by sneaking regarders in his party and the media, for refusing to hand Fianna Fail over to Sinn Fein.

All familiar territory to Micheal Martin. But, like Lynch, he has the backing of a big majority of his party and as Taoiseach he will govern with the same decent, gentle grit.